Freya Oxton-Grant
According to research carried out by Darren Lester at SpecifiedBy, 98% of specifiers prefer to carry out product research online.
Considering that so many decision-makers within the building products and construction industry are using the internet to help aid their specification process, it's crucial that companies take advantage of the delights of automation.
Automation has the ability to become 'your extra sales-person' so read on to find out what platforms are available to you.
If you have ever spent any time on Insynth’s website before you will know that we are a HubSpot Certified Partner Agency and therefore you know we are big admirers of the HubSpot software.
However, for this blog, I am putting as much of my bias as I can to the side in order to give you a comprehensive overview of the other marketing automation software on the market.
If you are interested in implementing marketing automation to improve your construction business’ marketing and save you time and money, then this blog will go over a few of the options you can choose.
Do You Want All-In-One Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation software encompasses multiple elements. This means you will want to look for a package provider that will combine the key automation tools: email, social media, lead nurturing, customer relationship management (CRM), customer service, and workflow automation.
Having these capabilities in one integrated location means you can track your marketing results across each element, which is almost impossible to do if you use separate software for each marketing tool.
However, this decision is up to you and what best suits your business’ needs.
Combining all the tools together can increase the complexity of the software and can also cost more, depending on which all-in-one package you choose.
You don’t want to be paying for a package that includes capabilities you don’t use, or ever intend on using in the future.
Read on further if you want to learn more about the top marketing automation tools so you can make an educated decision on what is best for your construction marketing.
The Top Marketing Automation Tools
Marketo
Marketo is a popular and well-established marketing automation platform.
Marketo offers a one-stop platform for automation, content management, customer data (CRM), and analytics that is personalised and measurable.
Where Marketo really performs is that it offers advanced email campaigns and workflows, which is really appealing if that is what your business wants to focus on improving efficiency in.
However, these advanced features can be a little overwhelming due to their technicality and intricacy, but if you have a strong background in IT you might really enjoy getting your teeth stuck in.
One of Marketo’s advantages is that it specialises in larger businesses as it allows you to add over 100,000 leads into the system.
However, one of the cons of Marketo versus other marketing packages is that is doesn’t offer the all-in-one platform that competitors, such as HubSpot, do.
It doesn’t have a content management system so you would have to use a separate website platform for your content and blogs.
Overall, Marketo is more targeted to bigger businesses with their own IT department (or technical savvy marketers) due to its complexity and steep learning curve required to get set up on the software.
HubSpot
HubSpot is definitely an all-in-one marketing package. It is a comprehensive and effective platform developed in its founding methodology of inbound marketing.
Its biggest strength is the fact that marketing automation is only an element in its integrated system that manages the entire marketing process from attracting a website visitor to them becoming a delighted customer.
HubSpot is not only a marketing software, it is a sales system and customer service hub too.
Each section tracks your customer throughout their journey, and is designed that way, so you can get an insight into how effective your entire lifecycle is, is as you capture and then nurture your leads.
HubSpot is an easy to use, end-to-end platform and is directly targeted at small to medium-sized businesses. The beauty of HubSpot is that is doesn’t leave you in the dark once you have decided to invest in the platform. HubSpot Academy provides easy to follow instructional videos and there is also email and live chat customer support to get any queries answered 24/7.
HubSpot’s platform offers a content management system and website hosting service. This includes the on-page editor which makes it easy to create your website as well as integrated SEO tools.
The marketing automation tools also span email marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), lead nurturing and tracking, and live chat that can be embedded on your website.
Mautic
Mautic is an “open source” marketing software, which means developers are constantly adding and improving the software, even volunteers.
This gives greater flexibility because it gives you the ability to add any marketing automation capability you want. If you are a software developer that is!
For the regular marketer, the main benefit is that the software is programmed to be easy to use as it is made by the people that use it. Mautic provides an effective and user-friendly automation tool that provides lead nurturing, CRM, workflows, and email marketing automation.
MailChimp
MailChimp was originally an email marketing platform that was well-loved and pretty popular.
However, they have recently expanded their software and rebranded to become an all-in-one marketing platform, rivalling HubSpot.
MailChimp targets the small to medium-sized businesses that strive to improve their marketing campaigns and implement marketing automation.
Advancing their email platform means MailChimp users can now get greater insights from who those email recipients are and how they are interacting with the rest of your marketing content and website. MailChimp offers automated emails and CRM as well as single-step automated workflows.
The drawbacks of MailChimp is that other competitors offer more advanced automated workflows, for example, more than just a trigger on your website causing a single response. HubSpot for instance can automate multiple activities to happen from one trigger e.g. a series of follow up emails spaced over weeks or months.
Active Campaign
ActiveCampaign is specialised for small businesses and provides flexible and effective marketing automation.
It offers an integrated automation platform that covers CRM to email marketing.
Its big selling point is that it provides an array of pre-built automation templates that means you can easily create campaigns for each digital channel.
Keap
Keap, previously known as InfusionSoft, targets primarily small businesses and entrepreneurs in the service-based business industry.
Keap brands themselves as an all-on-one marketing platform that includes sales tools too. The platform offers email marketing, lead nurturing, workflows, and CRM automation.
The drawbacks of Keap are that the software doesn’t include any social media automation. It also declares itself that it is mainly for small businesses not medium-sized ones or bigger.
Conclusion
There are so many options for marketing automation software, I have barely scratched the surface with this list.
However, whichever platform you decide on, marketing automation is worth the investment.
These packages give you the ability to revolutionise your marketing processes and give you analysis and insights on what you can optimise and where you can improve.
Want to learn more about marketing automation for your building products or construction business? Read our BEGINNER'S GUIDE to Marketing Automation for Construction Companies.
Which Marketing Automation Tool Will Be Best for Your Construction Business?
If you would like to read customer reviews for each I really recommend visiting the G2 Crowd website, which specialises in technology and software reviews.
They even offer a market comparison, which I have edited in the image below to illustrate where the marketing automation platforms I have reviewed in this article stand.
Note: within this map, I have narrowed the search to software that specialises in marketing automation for B2B businesses.
There are so many different options, each which provide similar abilities, so you just have to choose one that meets your needs and is a healthy balance between quality, service and price.
At Insynth, we expect the best from our marketing platform and want it to give us an all-in-one experience.
That is why we prefer HubSpot.
If your business wants to really grow you will need a marketing automation tool, and one that tracks and analyses that growth and what is driving it. HubSpot is a great software that allows you to do that.
If you are interested in implementing marketing automation in your construction company's marketing, we would love to sit down with you and talk it through!
We understand the benefits of marketing automation and would be able to offer you advice on which platform would be best for you and your marketing needs.
We are offering free consultations so please follow the link below where you can book in a time slot with us. We would be happy to help you reach your business goals.
About Insynth
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.